If you have a disability claim with Unum Insurance, then there are three strategies you should use to help you win your Unum disability insurance claim.
First, if you are on social media, check your privacy settings and adjust them to prevent anyone who is not your friend from seeing what you do on social media. It would be better to stop putting information on social media altogether. Do not accept friend requests from anyone you do not know well. Do not allow your friends to tag you or your pictures.
Social media serves as a very strong investigation tool for Unum. Posts on sites like Facebook or Instagram tend to highlight the positive sides of a person’s life, while deemphasizing the negative, and that paints an inaccurate picture when it comes to your disability. Unum looks for evidence on social media that could be construed as proof that you are able to work.
Second, immediately begin keeping a disability journal that records your symptoms, your limitations, and your restrictions. Document any medication side effects that you experience. Keep your journal consistent to build a record of what happens right when it happens. You can then share this information with your doctor, and possibly even with your adjuster in the future. This is a level of documentation that most claimants do not prepare, and it can be very helpful in supporting your claim.
Third, tell your doctors you do not authorize them to speak with anyone about your claim. Doctors from Unum will try to contact your doctors – often by phone. Tell your doctors to respond to Unum’s doctors’ requests for information by requesting those questions in writing. Then your doctor should talk with you about those written questions from Unum’s doctors.
Often, a claimant’s doctors will unwittingly harm their patient’s claim by talking to Unum’s doctors, as Unum is specifically seeking to collect any information that can be presented to hurt your claim. Write a letter to your Unum adjuster indicating that they do not have your authorization to speak directly with your doctors. Watch the video to learn more.
At Tucker Disability Law we handle disability insurance cases every day. If you have any additional questions, call Tucker Disability Law at (866) 282-5260, or review our videos and media library for more information.
Video TranscriptHere are three things you can do to help your Unum disability insurance claim. I'm John Tucker and I represent people like you all over the United States in group disability insurance cases involving all of the major insurance companies, including Unum. Unum is one of the larger companies. They actually control more than half of the market. If you have an Unum claim, there are three things that I'd recommend to you, today, that you can do to make your claim go better. Number one, if you're on social media, check your privacy settings. Lock it down. Don't let anyone who is not your friend see anything that you do on social media. I would actually recommend to you to stop putting things on social media. Don't accept friend requests from anyone you do not know well and make sure your friends can't tag you in pictures.
Social media is free investigation for Unum. It allows them, essentially, to have surveillance on you as you put pictures, or your friends put pictures of you, on Facebook or Instagram, any social media. As you put posts on social media, you're talking about your life, but people don't talk about the negative side of their life. We all try to keep those things personal. Well, the difficulty in a disability claim is those parts of your life are why you can't work. And though you may not want to tell the world about them, putting happy pictures, active pictures, things that are positive on Facebook or other social media can hurt your claim. And Unum is looking for those. Second, you should keep a disability journal. If you're not already keeping a journal of your symptoms, the limitations that you have, the restrictions that you have, the side effects of your medications, you're making a mistake. And you should start now. It's something you can share with your doctors. If written well enough, you can even share it with your adjuster. And if you do it on a regular basis, it's a contemporaneous account. It's information written at the time things happen of what's going on in your life. And it's an extra level of documentation that most claimants don't do. And you can send it to Unum or give to your doctors to support your claim.
Finally, Unum is using doctors to review your claim and those doctors may speak to your physicians without you knowing. Tell your doctors that you don't authorize them to speak to anybody about your claim. Tell them if they're contacted by a doctor from Unum to ask for any questions in writing and then talk with you about those questions. Doctors often unwittingly harm disability claims with Unum, because they tell Unum's doctors certain things. Unum's doctors don't write everything down. They only write down the things that hurt you. You don't need your doctors causing you problems without even knowing it. And you certainly want to know what's going on in your claim at all times. So, tell your doctors to get questions in writing. And write a letter to your Unum adjuster that they have no authorization to speak to any of your doctors directly.
If you have a disability claim with Unum and you have questions, or your claim has been denied, call us at the number on your screen. We handle cases all over the country from Florida to Alaska, dealing with Unum, and we can help you. I'm John Tucker. Thanks for watching.
